Brain Science: The Physiology Behind Success and Wealth Creation

All three parts of the brain are connected through a series of nerve fibers. The subconscious mind is found in the brain stem and in the limbic system. The conscious mind is found in the neocortex. Intuition, that little voice inside our heads, is found in all three parts of the brain.

Brain Stem

The brain stem is the oldest part of the brain. It is sometimes referred to as the Reptilian Brain, the Reactive Brain or the Instinctive Brain. At one time, it was the first and only part of our brain. The brain stem connects to our spinal cord which branches out to form our central nervous system. It is primarily made up of the Medulla Oblongata and the Pons. The brain stem controls all of our autonomic processes such as breathing, heart rate, swallowing, and organ function. It prompts hunger, our sex drive and the fight or flight mechanism. There is no thinking involved with the brain stem. It exists to ensure our survival.

Limbic System

The limbic system is the second oldest part of the brain. It is sometimes referred to as the Emotional Brain. It is where all of our emotions reside and takes part in memory storage, both long-term and short-term. It includes the following components:

Amygdala – Memory and emotions.

Hypothalmus – Muscle vibrations and internal temperature. This is why you shiver when you are sick. The hypothalmus increases body temperature to kill bacteria. Muscle vibrations generate heat to kill bacteria. The hypothalmus also controls appetite and hormones.

Thalmus – Sits right next to the Basal Ganglia. Affects touch, pain, temperature and muscles.

Hippocampus – Where short-term memory is stored. Occasionally it will move short-term memory to long-term storage in the neocortex.

Olfactory Lobe – Triggers smell. This is why smell sometimes evokes emotions. They both are connected in the limbic system.

Recticular Activating System – Vets the sensory information we take in. Most sensory information is blocked out by the recticular activating system.

Cingulate Cortex – Creates Mirror Neurons that are critical to developing new skills and for survival. These mirror neurons program children to mirror the behavior and emotions of their parents, good or bad. It is sometimes called the Monkey See, Monkey Do process.

Basal Ganglia – This is where habits are stored. The basal ganglia acts like the hub of a wheel for neural pathways created in the neocortex. Habits are formed when we repeatedly use certain neural pathways. The brain will create a hub inside the basal ganglia and link to that often used neural path. The hub stays there forever. That is why habits are hard to break. It takes 18 to 254 days for the brain to create a hub in the basal ganglia and, thus form a habit.

Neocortex

This is the newest, most unusual part of the brain. It is found only in mammals. It is most of our brain. Fully 5/6ths of our brain mass is made up of the neocortex. It has the most neurons – 40 billion. It is sometimes referred to as the Thinking Brain, Higher Brain, Conscious Brain, Cerebrum or Cerebral Cortex. It is responsible for learning, long-term memory, thought creation and decision making. It is comprised of the four lobes: Parietal, Frontal, Temporal (vision) and Occipital (vision), the Amygdalae and the Corpus Callosum – a bundle of nerves that connects the two hemispheres of the neocortex. It takes in and processes all sensory data.

Wealth Creation Programming

When a thought or action is coupled with any powerful emotion the brain automatically creates a neural pathway which is then stored permanently into our long-term memory. These permanently stored emotionalized thoughts act like software programming in our neocortex. Emotionalized actions produce the same programming. When we repeat an emotionalized thought or action over and over again, the neural pathway created in the neocortex then creates what is the equivalent of a neural spoke (like a spoke on a wheel). The neural pathway, by virtue of this neural spoke, is then linked to a newly formed neural hub (again, like the hub of a wheel) in the basal ganglia. This is how habits are formed. Once formed, a habit stays with us forever or until we break the old neural spoke link by forming more powerful, alternate habits (i.e. it goes away only when we form new, similar, but more powerful habits).

The repeated emotionalized thoughts, which eventually become habits, reprogram our minds. They create the foundation of our belief system. If we create a belief that we will be poor or that we will never be rich, that programming sticks and will direct our behavior in such a way as to ensure we are forever poor or never rich. Emotionalized actions work the same way. Repeating a behavior over and over again will eventually become a habit. If that behavior is bad, such as watching T.V. for hours or overeating, it sticks and the effect is wasting valuable time or obesity that can lead to heart disease or diabetes or any number of detrimental health issues.

The good news is that our belief system can be reprogrammed through this same process. If we change our repetitive emotionalized thoughts we can reprogram our minds. Similarly, by changing our emotionalized actions and repeating them over and over again they will eventually become habits which will alter our behavior. Wealthy, successful people reprogram their minds for success by using a number of reprogramming tools and strategies:

Practiced Gratitude – Every day give thanks for any good things that have come into your life in the past or the present. Try to find at least one good thing that happened yesterday and give thanks for it. Practiced Gratitude is like software that reprograms our brains. Once this programming is accepted by the brain, through repetition, it becomes a daily habit and will actually create new permanent neural pathways inside our brains. These new neural pathways then go to work directing our behavior in such a way as to cause the creation of more things to be grateful for. It changes our behavior from bad behavior to success-oriented behavior in order to draw in more things to be grateful for. We become a success-seeking GPS.

Practiced Optimism – Practiced Optimism means not allowing any doubt thoughts even a second of life. It requires that you monitor your thoughts and when one flashes in your mind you stop yourself and replace the doubt thought with an optimistic thought. “I can’t” become “I will”. “Nothing ever goes my way” becomes “everything goes my way”. When you Practice Optimism every day you are creating new neural pathways that will eventually become habits. Once they become habits, they then go to work directing our behavior in such a way as to create success. Much like the Practiced Gratitude Rich Habit, we become success-seeking GPS.

The Future Letter – Write a letter to yourself from the future about how incredible your life is. Be lavish in your details about the home you live in, the car you drive, the ideal job you have etc. Read this letter every day for a month. After a month revise it and repeat the process of reading it every day. The future letter works by agitating the brain into altering your behavior in order to create the ideal life you persistently think about every day.

Visualization – Create a pictorial Vision Board of all of the things you hope to accomplish and have in life. Keep adding to it every so often. The brain thinks in pictures. The Vision Board is the perfect software to feed the brain. By viewing your Vision Board every day you are reprogramming your mind and creating new neural pathways. Once these pathways become habitual thinking, the brain will then go to work to alter your behavior in order to obtain those things that are on your Vision Board.

Daily Affirmations – As if all of the above were not enough, I give you more. Daily Affirmations are repeated daily software programming that agitate the brain by asserting something that is not true about yourself. Saying “I weigh 135 pounds” every day, when you clearly weigh 180 just pisses off the brain. If you keep repeating this affirmation the brain will eventually seek to alter your behavior in order to get down to 135 pounds. You may find yourself eating less, eating healthier, exercising more. Once the brain accepts the affirmation as reality it then forces you to change your behavior. You don’t have a choice. In order for affirmations to work they have to be tied to some goal. Goals are only goals if they are 100% achievable and require some action. Otherwise they’re wishes and the brain cannot make wishes come true. The brain isn’t magical. It doesn’t manifest things out of thin air. It’s an organic computer. Its real magic is in altering your behavior, by directing you to perform an action that will allow a goal to be realized.

Living in the Present – Have you ever been at a party or on vacation, on a golf course or in a bar and thought about nothing but work, family problems, financial problems etc? If you have, you’re not alone. Many people fall into this Poverty Habit. When you allow worries to intrude in on what should be a Happiness Activity, you lose the Happiness Event forever. It’s just gone. Happiness Activities are the key to overall happiness. The more you have the happier your life will be. It is critical, therefore, to make a habit of Living in the Present. When you find yourself worrying about something while engaged in one of these Happiness Activities you need to stop yourself and tell yourself “just enjoy the moment”. If you make a habit out of this, eventually you will find yourself worrying less and you will also find yourself happier. Not worrying and Living in the Present gives your brain a breather. Living in the Present is good brain management and will allow you to employ all of the incredible powers of the brain. It relaxes your brain and you are able to think clearer when you have to.

Tom Corley understands the difference between being rich and poor: at age nine, his family went from being multi-millionaires to broke in just one night, due to a catastrophic fire that destroyed his Dad's thriving business. For fourteen years they struggled with poverty. There were eleven in Tom's family, and they lived in constant fear of losing their home.

Driven by the desire to unlock the secrets to success and failure, Tom spent five years studying the daily activities of 233 rich people and 128 poor people. He discovered there was an immense difference between the habits of the rich and the poor. During his research he identified over 300 daily activities that separated the “haves” from the “have nots.” Tom decided to write a book to share what he learned. That book, Rich Habits: The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals (1st Edition), went on to become an Amazon Bestseller in the United States forty times over a three year period. To give you some perspective, in order to be a true Amazon Bestseller in the United States, where you actually receive a specific Bestseller designation from Amazon, you need to be in the top 100 of all books sold by Amazon in the United States in a given day. Rich Habits did that for nearly thirty straight days, rising as high as #7, eclipsing such Bestselling authors such as Stephen Covey, Robert Kiyosaki and J.K. Rowlings. Imagine that - an unknown, first-time, self-published author selling more books than J.K. Rowlings!

Tom now travels the world, sharing his Rich Habits and motivating audiences at industry conferences, corporate events, universities, multi-level marketing group events, and global sales organizations’ presentations and finance conferences. He has even spoken on the same stage with famous entrepreneurs and personal development experts, such as Sir Richard Branson, Robin Sharma, Dr. Daniel Amen, and many others.

Tom has shared his insights on various national and international network, cable, and Internet television programs such as CBS Evening News, NBC News, Yahoo Financially Fit, Money.com, India TV, News.com Australia, and a host of others. He has been interviewed on many prestigious nationally syndicated radio shows, including the Dave Ramsey Show, Marketplace Money, and WABC.

Tom has been featured in numerous print magazines—such as Money magazine, Inc. Magazine, SUCCESS Magazine, Entrepreneur magazine, Fast Company magazine, More magazine, Epoca Magazine (Brazil’s largest weekly) and Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine—and various online publications, including USA Today, CNN, MSN Money, SUCCESS.com, Inc.com, and the Huffington Post. Tom is a frequent contributor to Business Insider, Credit.com, Bankrate.com and a few other media outlets.

National publicity has garnered international media attention for Tom and his Rich Habits research spanning 23 countries. Broadcast media, online publications, and television throughout Asia, the South Pacific, Europe, the United Kingdom, and Central and South America have shared his powerful message.

In an effort to help parents, grandparents, teachers and adults become success mentors to the younger generation, Tom released his second book, Rich Kids: How to Raise Our Children to be Happy and Successful in Life in 2014. This book was the self-help category winner of the 2015 New York Book Festival and Runner-up in the prestigious 2015 Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards Contest. In 2016 Tom released his third book, Change Your Habits, Change Your Life. This book provides the latest science on habit change as well as more of Tom's unique research on the specific habits that helped transform 177 ordinary individuals into self-made millionaires.

Besides being an author, Tom is also a CPA, CFP, and hold a master’s degree in taxation. As president of Cerefice and Company, CPAs, Tom heads one of the premier financial firms in New Jersey.